Global Domination

Friday, June 17

Though June had been looking pretty empty, the gigging was really quite intensive. Bookings were coming in at the last minute and I was doing too much. I had to keep a grip on things, or I would over-stretch myself and bore my girlfriend to tears.

On the Tuesday, I'd been discussing the Michael Jackson trial with a friend and I decided that I had to write a song to cover the outcome of his trial. I'd been toying with some ideas, but I had a gig that night and I thought that I could, perhaps, try to get the song written before the gig.

I nearly managed it. I had the song working in rehearsal in the house, but hadn't quite memorised the lyrics. Thinking that the show was in three sections (as had been planned at the start) I sat at the back of the room, writing my final crib sheet - trying to get the song into my head - as I suddenly heard my name announced. This is like the ultimate performance nightmare. My guitar wasn't wired in and I wasn't ready. However, you can't postpone your spot and so I went up there and grabbed the room.

The song didn't quite die, but the words were not truly in my head and I stuttered a bit within it. I clearly forgot where I was going, but I pretty much got to the end and got some good reaction. I'd started it too quickly, which was my major undoing. Still, it's a safe gig and the sky didn't fall in because I got a song slightly wrong.

The Wednesday night was my girlfriend's half-birthday. I invented this celebration as I didn't know her on her actual birthday and wanted to celebrate something. In this case, I bought her a wee gift and was nice to her (not that I'm ever otherwise).

On the Thursday, the work thing got intensive again as we crawled past another deadline without the world ending. Then I headed up to Edinburgh to close a show. I did my Michael Jackson song again and got it wrong again... not quite as wrong as last time, but wrong enough. My girlfriend knew it better than I did and nearly shouted out just as I grasped it from my mind and sang on. The audience reaction was very good, which was nice. There had been some bitchiness and silliness on the Chortle website and the organisers of the gig had promised the readers of Chortle a report on how I went. My status on Chortle isn't greatly important, though it can feel undermining when you read things about yourself which are unfair. Still, the big debate was yet to happen.

At the end of the week, we went out to Nando's. I've never been to Nando's before. I like it. It's a chicken restaurant. That's pretty much it, but it's very very very good. I'm glad we have one in Newcastle. I'm also glad that we moved within the non-smoking section to the part of it where there aren't smokers at the next table.

I'm glad of lots of things.

I'm particularly glad that I didn't take up an MCing job that was offered to me on the Friday night. This is partly because I wanted to spend some time with my girlfriend, and partly because I would have been required to introduce an act that I personally find offensive. How do you do that then? Well, you don't. So I didn't!